This week we had a guest lecture from Ken Blair who is a recording engineer and producer for his own label BMP recordings which is based in  Lincoln but  travels both the UK and America to various studio’s. The company BMP recordings focuses mostly on Jazz and orchestral styles and genre’s of music. Most of his key skills lye in the post editing and recording of orchestra’s and Jazz bands.

 

Before BMP recordings Ken taught music production at the university of surrey for 4 years.

 

Most of his technical advice was how to set up and the general recording process of recording jazz music going into specific detail about acoustics, mic set up etc. For example He made a point about how its important to have mics set up before the musicians arrive.

 

He also spoke about ways of getting into the industry, and heavily promoted opportunity, he spoke about taking chances no matter how impossible they may seem. He also added how he wrote to loads of recording studio’s but only one got back in touch with him offering experience. He also stated that we need as much experience as we can get if we want to build a reputation for ourselves.

 

He also gave us a bit of insight on how we may be able to better construct our CV when trying to get in the industry, he told us to relate it to all the departments in which we have experience in, in relation to the role and to have an easy to work with personality, as he previously stated is key for working with musicians.

 

This lecture I found interesting in the tailoring of my CV, how I can edit it and promote myself as a professional, that I’ll need to back up all my skills on my CV with an example, a past piece of work for example. I don’t think I really want to go into studio engineering work, although it’s a possibility. But some of the tips and techniques discussed in this lecture will surly be of aid if I do find myself in a recording studio environment, (which no doubt will probably happen at some stage)

This week was the last of our guest lectures and probably one of the most interesting even though it doesn’t exactly apply to myself, but covers a matter which I do agree with. Women in the industry.

 

She showed us her organisation co-founded with Richard Burgess called ‘Women Produce Music’ who’s aims it is to promote and help establish women in the music industry. She promoted the work of some highly established producers like Bjork and mentioned how none of them had won an award through the industry. She did state that Women Produce Music is by no means a feminist organisation with radical views or whatever.

 

She spoke a lot about the process she and her co-founder Richard had to go through to help set up and establish women produce music, such as the building of their social media presence, and also presented her research about women in the industry to the UK music equality and Diversity Committee.

 

She spoke a lot about press and how women are undervalued through it, for example Bjork worked on a collaboration with a male artist through the project yet she wasn’t given credit for her work.

 

She finished the lecture by saying how record labels watch producers, and how they will promote their works to reach a larger audience.

 

Through this lecture I realised how little influence women are given in the industry and I do genrally agree that it needs to be equalised

For this week we had a guest lecture from Dan Shepard who bases most of his work within radio and podcasts. Prior to the lecture we had to listen to two podcasts that Dan would ask us about in the lecture. One was a podcast about chopping and editing called ‘Cutting Up The Cut-Up’ where they focused on the works of people such as cassette boy amongst many others. This was my favourite of the two podcasts as I found it more amusing and also more engaging. The other podcast was about a train journey through Australia from Sydney to Perth which focused on a range of perspectives. The sonic environment was a lot more in depth than the previous podcast as it was trying to set a scene audibly through the use of fx, textures and other background sound.

 

Dan made a point of pointing out the difference between radio documentaries like ‘Cutting Up The Cut-Up’ and Radio Feature Programmes such as ‘Indian Pacific’ which was the name of the other podcast we listened to. He made a point of saying that features have a wider range of subject matters and generally when working on features you can be a bit more creative with what you do. As he spoke about the production process of the creating a radio feature I couldn’t help but think back of how I could incorporate elements of this into my own soundscape and how the both inter-related quite a bit. Dan led most of the lecture talking about how he produced the content for this feature programme and how he recorded 30 hours of content that went into it, and questions that came through his mind such as how he was going to convey the perspective of being on a train journey through radio.

 

Dan didn’t speak to much about the documentary, but did say that it was presenter led inside the studio, and the primary function of the documentary is to educate the listener.

 

Through this lecture I didn’t really learn much about radio that is useful to my project but, through Dan’s words on the Feature programme, I took a couple of idea’s about working with perspectives within my soundscape and how I can change them up and choose which perspective my listener is listening from at any one point.